Our View: Police see promise and perils of social media

It's been fascinating to watch how various emergency responders use social media.

More and more, police departments have assigned personnel to post and Tweet updates. Not only do the posts publicize the departments' work, they also enlist the public's help in fighting crime.

It's been fascinating to watch how various emergency responders use social media.

More and more, police departments have assigned personnel to post and Tweet updates. Not only do the posts publicize the departments' work, they also enlist the public's help in fighting crime.

We appreciate the efforts of the Massachusetts State Police force's use of social media. Through his official Twitter account, Trooper Dustin Fitch has become one of the premiere social media ambassadors for law enforcement.

Similarly, local police departments are starting to make excellent use of Twitter to alert the media and the public to traffic-causing accidents, missing persons and various other public safety issues in real time.

The police also use social media to track crime, receive tips and, perhaps most importantly, to build relationships within their respective communities.

Yet as some agencies have learned, social media has its dark side, too.

Weymouth police posted a message on Facebook recently expressing frustration that "...some people are careless and irresponsible in sharing news on social media without checking the facts first."

Weymouth police Capt. Richard Fuller made an excellent point when he said it's disappointing that people would engage in such irresponsible rumor mongering. As both law enforcement investigators — and the media — know well, it takes time to sort fact from fiction.

We've seen no evidence that these 21st-century iterations of "Telephone" have impeded a police investigation or hampered a fire department's response — nothing that would make the case for silencing scanner chatter.

Yes, there was the horrifying episode of the missing Brown University student who was falsely linked to the Boston Marathon bombing on Reddit and Twitter. His body was later found in Providence. As reckless as users of social media were in that instance, there were no reports they had any impact on the marathon investigation, though the student's family suffered horribly.

The nature of the modern world requires not only police, but the media, to separate the wheat from the chaff on social media. We can only hope those who use Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter will do the same.

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